Job Description
Product Owner
Location: NYC or Chicago
Work mode: Hybrid (3 day onsite)
Duration: Contract
Responsibilities:
- Product Lifecycle Ownership:
- Own features end-to-end from discovery and definition through development, launch, and iteration.
- Maintain and prioritize the product backlog in alignment with business objectives, customer needs, and technical constraints.
- Define success metrics for each release and track outcomes post-launch to inform the next iteration.
- Requirements & Communication:
- Articulate product requirements clearly and unambiguously to engineering, design, QA, and business stakeholders.
- Lead backlog refinement, sprint planning, and demos; act as the primary point of contact for the development team throughout the sprint.
- Translate ambiguous business problems into concrete scope, acceptance criteria, and release plans.
- Design Collaboration:
- Work directly in Figma to review flows, annotate designs, create low-fidelity wireframes, and prototype concepts when needed.
- Partner with designers to ensure user flows, edge cases, and interaction details are covered before development begins.
- Jira & Story Writing:
- Write clear, well-scoped user stories in Jira with strong acceptance criteria, context, and linked design and technical references.
- Structure epics, stories, and sub-tasks so engineering teams can plan and deliver confidently without repeated back-and-forth.
- Maintain a clean, prioritized backlog with consistent labeling, estimation, and release tagging.
- AI-Accelerated Delivery:
- Use AI tools (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Notion AI, or similar) to accelerate requirement drafting, story writing, competitive research, and stakeholder communication.
- Identify opportunities to introduce AI-assisted workflows across the product team to improve throughput and quality.
- Apply sound judgment when using AI output — validating, editing, and contextualizing results rather than copying them wholesale.
Required Qualifications:
- 8+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or equivalent role in an agile software environment.
- Demonstrated understanding of the full product lifecycle: discovery, definition, delivery, launch, and iteration.
- Proven ability to write clear, engineer-ready user stories and acceptance criteria in Jira.
- Working proficiency in Figma — able to navigate files, leave structured feedback, and create basic wireframes or prototypes.
- Hands-on experience integrating AI tools into day-to-day product work to improve speed and quality.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; comfortable presenting to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience working in Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid agile environments.
Nice to Have:
- Prior contract or consulting experience; able to ramp quickly in a new domain.
- Exposure to SaaS, B2B platforms, or AI/ML-powered products.
- Familiarity with analytics tools (e.g., Amplitude, Mixpanel, GA4) and basic SQL.
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or equivalent certification.
Job Tags
Contract work